Thursday, 3 September 2015

A small nudge backlash in Heidelberg

... the nudge did work in eliciting more pledges (promises of contributions)... but did not generate more actual contributions to charities...

Anett John:

Commitment problems are widely regarded as a remedy for self-control problems.... Individuals chose the stakes of the contract (a default penalty) themselves. A majority appears to choose a harmful contract... 55 per cent of clients default on their savings contract.

Mette Damgaard:

we present a ... model which contrasts the often documented benefit of reminders with a previously neglected cost of annoyance that a large number of messages can cause.... a reminder leads to more donations but we also document that the reminder leads to more unsubscriptions.